WotC: 'We made a mistake when we said an image not AI'

It seems like AI art is going to be a recurring news theme this year. While this is Magic: the Gathering news rather than D&D or TTRPG news, WotC and AI art has been a hot topic a few times recently. When MtG community members observed that a promotional image looked like it was made with AI, WotC denied that was the case, saying in a now-deleted tweet "We understand confusion by fans given...

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It seems like AI art is going to be a recurring news theme this year. While this is Magic: the Gathering news rather than D&D or TTRPG news, WotC and AI art has been a hot topic a few times recently.

When MtG community members observed that a promotional image looked like it was made with AI, WotC denied that was the case, saying in a now-deleted tweet "We understand confusion by fans given the style being different than card art, but we stand by our previous statement. This art was created by humans and not AI."

However, they have just reversed their position and admitted that the art was, indeed, made with the help of AI tools.

Well, we made a mistake earlier when we said that a marketing image we posted was not created using AI. Read on for more.

As you, our diligent community pointed out, it looks like some AI components that are now popping up in industry standard tools like Photoshop crept into our marketing creative, even if a human did the work to create the overall image.

While the art came from a vendor, it’s on us to make sure that we are living up to our promise to support the amazing human ingenuity that makes Magic great.

We already made clear that we require artists, writers, and creatives contributing to the Magic TCG to refrain from using AI generative tools to create final Magic products.

Now we’re evaluating how we work with vendors on creative beyond our products – like these marketing images – to make sure that we are living up to those values.


This comes shortly after a different controversy when a YouTube accused them (falsely in this case) of using AI on a D&D promotional image, after which WotC reiterated that "We require artists, writers, and creatives contributing to the D&D TTRPG to refrain from using AI generative tools to create final D&D products."

The AI art tool Midjourney is being sued in California right now by three Magic: The Gathering artists who determined that theirs and nearly 6,000 other artists' work had been scraped without permission. That case is ongoing.

Various tools and online platforms are now incorporating AI into their processes. AI options are appearing on stock art sites like Shutterstock, and creative design platforms like Canva are now offering AI. Moreover, tools within applications like Photoshop are starting to draw on AI, with the software intelligently filling spaces where objects are removed and so on. As time goes on, AI is going to creep into more and more of the creative processes used by artists, writers, and video-makers.

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Bedrockgames

I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
If I understand the issue they describe, and if their description is accurate, this seems pretty thorny and maybe unavailable. It is one thing to vet for works where the artist uses AI to generate them, but if there is a tool in photoshop that is somehow drawing on AI that might get a lot more difficult to vet. I am not sure what the tool is though so could make a difference
 

Scribe

Legend
If I understand the issue they describe, and if their description is accurate, this seems pretty thorny and maybe unavailable. It is one thing to vet for works where the artist uses AI to generate them, but if there is a tool in photoshop that is somehow drawing on AI that might get a lot more difficult to vet. I am not sure what the tool is though so could make a difference

It will be impossible to determine in short order. Again, I remember the 'art' we generated via these tools over a year ago. It was a hallucinatory mess of color, and while interesting, was not all that impressive.

Fast forward to today, and we could already improve of a vast amount of WotC/D&D art with AI generated pieces.

Fast forward another year? Good luck telling anything apart.
 


There was an ad by Wacom - y'know, for the tablet that artists use to make art - and the ad was AI generated. Way to piss off your audience.

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Look at the tail just sorta appearing out of the belly, and the fringe of the back not going up the spine. No real artist would screw up like that.
 
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